And it is a process, according to Dworkin, that “must bring the lawyer very deeply into political and moral theory.” Indeed, in later writings, Dworkin went so far as to assert, somewhat implausiblely, that “the opinion of each judge is itself a piece of legal philosophy, even when the philosophy is hidden and the visible argument is dominated by quotations and lists of facts” (Dworkin 1986, 90). In one of Aristotle`s works entitled Politics, he asserted that “man is by nature a political animal”. By this he meant that humans were naturally destined to live in groups, which required some kind of ruler or government. According to Aristotle, only by living in community “to ensure the good life” could man attain virtues such as courage, honesty and justice. In his time, this human community was a city-state like Athens. The strength of Thomas Aquinas` philosophy of law lies in the theory of the content of law and, in particular, of natural law. Divine law includes any body of law that is perceived to come from a transcendent source, such as the will of God or the gods – as opposed to man-made law or secular law. According to Angelos Chaniotis and Rudolph F. Peters, divine laws are generally considered superior to man-made laws,[1][2] sometimes assuming that their source has resources beyond human knowledge and reason. [3] Those who believe in divine laws could give them greater authority than other laws,[4][5][2] for example, assuming that divine law cannot be changed by human authorities. [2] It may be true that by the approach of virtue we can learn some general rules of natural law. More interesting is whether an advocate of the virtue approach would be right if he rejected the claims of the main rule or methodological approaches. (After all, one might learn that lying is false, either by moral arguments or by the clever insight of practical wisdom.) And it does not seem that the defender of the main rule or methodological approach should be particularly concerned with discrediting the approach of virtue.

For if the advocates of the main rule or methodological approach recognize the existence of a capacity for discernment such as practical wisdom, then it would be strange to allow it to be exercised correctly on several specific occasions, while denying that we can learn general rules by observing patterns of their exercise on different occasions. The separability thesis, at the most general level, simply denies the overlapping naturalism thesis; According to the separability thesis, there is no conceptual overlap between the concepts of law and morality. As Hart interprets it more narrowly, the separability thesis is “simply the mere assertion that it is by no means a necessary truth that laws reproduce or satisfy certain requirements of morality, when in fact they have done so many times” (Hart 1994, 185-186). Note that Dworkin`s views on legal principles and legal obligations do not conform to the three fundamental obligations of legal positivism. Each contradicts the thesis of conventionality insofar as judges are obliged to interpret the postulated law in the light of unstated moral principles. Each contradicts the thesis of the social fact because these moral principles are considered part of the law of a community, whether they have been officially proclaimed or not. More importantly, Dworkin`s view contradicts the separability thesis in that it seems to imply that certain norms are necessarily valid because of their moral content. It is his thesis of the denial of separability that places Dworkin in the camp of naturalists. 27The divine law discovered by revelation must be regarded as the divine equivalent of human law (that discovered by rational reflection and created by man). The divine laws are those which God, in his grace, has seen fit to give us, and are these “mysteries”, these rules given by God that we find in the Scriptures; For example, the Ten Commandments.

But why introduce the Divine Law? We certainly feel that we have enough laws. Here is a story to illustrate Thomas Aquinas` answer. Beings created without intellect or will (whether animate or inanimate) are willing to be and oriented towards their own perfection in the context of the perfection of the whole, approaching this perfection automatically or spontaneously and without understanding or resistance. However, creatures endowed with intellect and will (angels and men) only fully realize their own possibilities consciously or through intelligible and occasional decisions and are therefore able to confirm or thwart God`s creative plan. Here we see the role in the divine plan and in human life for the law, as people characteristically understand the term: the law, Thomas will, is an external source or principle of human perfection or full human development.